1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image resolution increasing method and apparatus, which convert image data captured by a camera or received by a television into image data of a higher resolution.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, display apparatuses such as televisions, displays, and the like having a large number of pixels have prevailed. An image can be displayed up to its details as the number of pixels of the display apparatus is larger. That is, a high-resolution image can be displayed.
In order to increase the number of pixels, an interpolation manner is popularly used. The interpolation manner can speed up processing but it cannot always obtain a sharp image. In order to obtain a sharper image than the interpolation manner, a method of generating a high-resolution image that satisfies a constraint called a reconstruction constraint is available (for example, see A. Tanaka, H. Imai, and M. Miyakoshi, “Digital Image Enlargement Based on Kernel Component Estimation,” International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, vol. 15, pp. 97-108, 2004).
However, the conventional method of generating a high-resolution image that satisfies a reconstruction constraint suffers a problem of high calculation cost. In case of high calculation cost, for example, in a situation that requires increasing resolution so as to display a moving picture on a display apparatus, the processing speed of increasing resolution becomes lower than the playback speed of the moving picture, thus posing a problem of dropping frames.